When a brand is born on the way to school
Pierre DeRoche may be celebrating its 11th anniversary this year but with its concentric chronograph and retrograde seconds the small brand from La Vallée de Joux proves to be heir to a long family tradition.
By Marco Cattaneo
Journalist
When we think of Pierre DeRoche we picture three powerful collections (“Split Rock”, “Grand Cliff” and “TNT”), and a production of 300 watches in one year by only two workers who also happen to be the founders, Pierre Dubois and his wife, Carole. The brand started 2015 by adding a curious little pair of watches to its catalogue, and creating new versions of its traditional products mainly for women. An example would be the streamlined “Grand Cliff” and its mother-of-pearl dial on which there is only a subtle power reserve indicator at 7 o’clock. After all, this is Pierre Dubois we are talking about, and he would want to go beyond the traditional three-hand watch.
Bonnie and Clyde’s mirror game
The two new watches in the TNT collection are like the yin and yang of watchmaking. They feature an accurate but reversed reflection of each other, like a photo and its negative, and both play with contrasting black and white.
They are called “Bonnie and Clyde” and one of them features a galvanized movement with a white plate and black bridges whilst the other one uses colors the other way round. The same logic applies to the bezel, whose resin was mixed with ceramic powder for the white version and with carbon for the black one. The collection also includes the Royal Retro GMT, which features a second time zone at 6 o’clock. It can be regulated every 30 minutes and meets the needs of particular countries, such as India, Iran or Venezuela.
However, the million-dollar question concerns the origin of the brand founded in 2004 but which seems to be heir to a long – and rather orthodox – watchmaking tradition. And how has it produced its three collections? We need to review its founder’s career to find the answers to those questions.
From sports to finance to watchmaking
His career might not be Ulysses’ voyage but it bears some resemblance to it. It was only a matter of time before Pierre Dubois, son and grandson of watchmakers, embraced his true calling after making every effort to stay away from it even though he had been surrounded by the art when growing up. His family founded and still manages Dubois Dépraz, a company that provides movements and complications to many established brands. He wanted to become a sports teacher and studied for three years to become one but only taught for one year.
“How was I to transmit my passion to thirty young girls whose only objective was to avoid sweating?” After that, he studied finance for yet another three years at HEC Lausanne and worked in banking for seven years. However, as the saying goes, you cannot escape your destiny and Audemars Piguet contacted Dubois to offer him the post of financial manager. “It’s strange but that’s how it happened, I embraced watchmaking through finance”. He worked at the Brassus-based maison for 14 yearsbefore moving on to establishing Pierre DeRoche together with his wife, Carole.
In 2004, he set up the brand’s headquarters at the family house where he was born in Le Lieu (Vallée de Joux). He could not use the name “Dubois” as it had already been patented in all watchmaking departments. A childhood memory came to the rescue; on his way to school as a child, a local farmer used to play a word game with the literal meaning of his name, Pierre (stone) and Dubois (from the forest): “When your name is Dubois, you cannot be called Pierre, it doesn’t match!” Dubois swears this is no marketing approach, but that it did happen: “Hence, he called me “Caillou de Roche” (something like pebble from the rock)”. Dubois asked his dear ones about naming his company “Pierre C. de Roche” but the “C” did not fit well and he dropped it. “Pierre DeRoche” was born.
A chronometric chronograph in the family archives
For his first watch with Pierre DeRoche, he wanted to create something out of the ordinary. He found what he was looking for in his father’s archives. When the quartz crisis was in full force in the 1970s, his father designed a chronograph that converged all the hour, minute and second indications into one position, whereas traditional indications were interspersed on different counters across the dial. The product was released but was unsuccessful and quickly forgotten. This was just what Pierre Dubois needed. In collaboration with his network of partners and the active support from Dubois Depraz – managed by his brothers – he redesigned the whole movement and turned it into a small mechanical jewel. It was a concentric chronograph that looked like a second dial at 6 o’clock. Housing it in a rectangular case, he then proceeded to name the watch Split Rock in tribute to a locality in Vallee de Joux.
He also set about to create the Grand Cliff that he housed in a round-shaped case. This watch had a retrograde function for the chronograph’s hours and a calibrated minute counter on 60 minutes, while chronographs were usually designed on 30. “It allowed the user to read the minutes in the same way on the watch and on the chronograph and thus avoid visual conflict”.
In March 2005, he came to Basel with two products and opened five points of sale in ten days. Those were good times for watchmaking start-ups.
The Russian market’s expectations
The TNT collection came about later on when Russia, the brand’s most important market, requested more imposing, spectacular and show-off watches, as Dubois succinctly put it. Hence, he chose a 47-mm case in which he added an unexpected complication. He has always had a soft spot for the play of retrograde hands but he also wanted to make the dial as lively as possible. To this end, he swapped the central large second for six small retrograde hands around the dial, each one of which makes a rotation every ten seconds. “It works just like relay races”, explained the former sports teacher, not without some glee. However, the financial crisis and its sequels occurred in the meantime. The ruble depression hit Ukraine severely and consequently the Russian market could not afford this new customized collection. “It may not have caused a loss for everyone, but it sure did for me!” He thus made the TNT collection’s watches thinner and released the collection on the Asian market with 43-mm pieces for men and even 42-mm versions for women.